Engineered to Fail · Part 4 of 6

Crewing Feasibility in Capability Planning: Sized in Platforms, Left to Trend Lines

Platforms are counted in units, delivery dates and dollars. The people who will crew, maintain and sustain them are usually carried as a trend line, and the gap becomes structural before anyone measures it.

Dr Anthony Walker, PhD in thermal and occupational physiology. Founder and Managing Director, Optimised Human Performance.
Published 28 September 2026.

Can a force rearm faster than it can recruit and retain?

Germany is the clearest recent test. Since 2022 it has committed to rearm. Over the same period its armed forces shrank and aged. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Armed Forces reported that 181,514 soldiers served in 2023, "1.537 weniger als im Vorjahr", 1,537 fewer than the year before, continuing the decline of recent years (my translation of the Bundestag’s summary). By the end of 2024 the figure was 181,174. In the Commissioner’s words, "Während das Durchschnittsalter Ende 2019 noch 32,4 Jahre betrug, ist es bis Ende 2024 auf 34 Jahre gestiegen": average age rose from 32.4 at the end of 2019 to 34 at the end of 2024. And, "Insgesamt verlässt jede beziehungsweise jeder Vierte die Bundeswehr wieder innerhalb eines Zeitraums von sechs Monaten": overall, one in four leaves again within six months.

In May 2025 Germany’s Federal Court of Audit put the point in one sentence. Its president, Kay Scheller, said: "Eine starke Bundeswehr braucht nicht nur Geld für neue Waffensysteme – sie muss auch organisatorisch und personell auf die Landes- und Bündnisverteidigung ausgerichtet werden." A strong Bundeswehr needs more than money for new weapon systems; it must also be organised and staffed for national and alliance defence (my translation). The Court said it saw "dringenden Handlungsbedarf", an urgent need for action, and recommended restructuring the personnel body.

What happens when a platform is designed around a crew number?

The same mechanism appears when the platform is designed around a crew number. In 2017 the US Government Accountability Office found that "The Navy continues to use an outdated standard workweek that may overstate the amount of sailor time available for productive work", that its instruction "does not require reassessing factors to ensure they remain valid", and that "as the Navy has gained experience operating its new ship classes, their crew sizes have grown and may continue to do so." The crew number that justified the design was an assumption, and nothing required the assumption to be re-tested against the work.

Has Australia audited the same problem?

Australia has its own audited example. In 2009 the Australian National Audit Office reported on Collins-class sustainment: "Current demand for submariners is a total of 667 officers and sailors with a supply of 423 at June 2008, or a shortfall of 244 or 37 per cent across all categories of submariners. The shortfall has more than doubled over the previous four years." Counting submariners who could not be deployed, the ANAO put the total shortfall at 43 per cent. The boats existed. The people to crew them had been falling behind for years before an auditor put a number on it.

Why do physical employment standards keep testing the wrong job?

I have worked on developing physical employment standards in firefighting and aviation settings. Getting to a test that reliably identifies who can do the job safely and consistently is hard, and the problem is not going away. The harder issue is that many tests still in use were built around the job as it was done decades ago and validated against a population that no longer matches the people doing the work.

That matters for capability planning because a standard is a supply constraint. If the test does not describe the current job, it either screens out people who could do the work or passes people the work will injure, and either outcome lands on the crewing number a programme assumed it could fill.

Where would this argument be wrong?

Capability is sized in platforms and budgets. Crewing, maintainer and sustainment numbers are left to trend lines until an auditor measures the gap, and by then the gap is structural.

The evidence that would weaken this claim is a programme where crew, maintainer and sustainment numbers were treated as a hard design requirement from the outset, tested with the same rigour as the platform, and held. If you have worked on one, I want to hear how it was governed.

Dr Anthony Walker holds a PhD in thermal and occupational physiology and served fifteen years in operational firefighting, including station officer command. He is Founder and Managing Director of Optimised Human Performance, a specialist consultancy in human systems integration and work system design for Defence, aviation, emergency services and resources clients.